After The Rain

So, the whole thing is over. At round 10:30 this morning, Michael Rodriguez - escaped Clearfield County Jail inmate and fugitive for a little over 18 hours - blew through a roadblock in a stolen pick-up, busted his tires over spike strips, and crashed into an embankment.

However.

The media is only reporting that Rodriguez was injured, but able to walk to the staging area for LifeFlight. This is nothing compared to what I've heard: Rodriguez was indeed injured. I've heard broken legs and broken ankles, but in either case, something's broken.

Now, if Rodriguez is suffering from even one broken leg/ankle, he's also been through a pretty nerve-racking ordeal, and probably would have not been in any condition to put up any resistance.

And yet, I've been told that Rodriguez was forcibly removed from the pick-up, slammed to the ground face first - hard - and a boot was put into his neck - right after he was in a fairly nasty crash. Any emergency services worker on the planet will tell you that just moving an accident victim is tricky business and shouldn't be done lightly.

Furthermore, I've also been told that they spent a moment beating Rodriguez up a bit, probably to "teach him to not run again." After all, he had the gall to break out of jail and cause them to do their jobs! Oh noes!

After all that, he was then forced to walk UP A HILL to the extraction area where LifeFlight would take him to the hospital. So that's a reported two broken legs/ankles, one rough trip out of the vehicle, one rough meeting between ground and face, one boot to the neck to hold him down, a bit of the old Rodney King treatment, and then a Green Mile march up a fucking hill to the landing zone.

Something is seriously wrong here, people.

For the folks coming to this site from Buffalo: Obviously, you either know or know of Rodriguez, otherwise you wouldn't be searching for him. Whatever you do, don't stay quiet. Don't let Bill Shaw and the local authorities bully you. Speak up. Demand an investigation.

While Rodriguez was a sick puppy (burglary and assaulting his ex-girlfriend, among a probable laundry list of other violent crimes), no person deserves to be fucked with like that, especially after an accident. Seriously: What if Rodriguez died as a result of direct police action AFTER the crash? This place would make national news in a heartbeat if that had happened.

Thankfully, he's still alive as of yet, and the national eye can still be turned this way. If there's even a hint of possible police brutality, fan that motherfucker until the flames grow too high to not be noticed.

Clearfield County has long been in need of a good housecleaning: The corrupt elements here would surprise you. This is the second escape in three years from Clearfield County Jail: Sam Lombardo's job is in trouble, as are those of whatever COs were on duty at the time. And if local and State police are involved in any brutality, that creates a seperate fire. If the two meet and begin burning as one, then you just might see comissioners, attorneys, and judges in the other public eye: the one that doesn't like you or what you're doing very much at all.

As local residents, we have the right to know just what the hell is going on with the people we trust to protect us. If they're doing stuff that made national pariahs out of so many before them, then we need to know about it, and we need to make it stop. We need to weed out the corrupt and arrogant elements of our own local government if we even think we have a chance at making it as a community.

Otherwise, we'll still be overseen by incompetent fools who think it's all just a popularity contest and an easy paycheck at the expense of the "little people..."